


fumificate

by harklights



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, some kind of modern fantasy school au i'm sorry i'm not very sure either
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harklights/pseuds/harklights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when your everyday run-of-the-mill demon summoning goes slightly awry</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fumificate

“Is that normal?”

“I’m not sure,” Ennoshita responds, sounding much too calm for someone holding a book that just went up in literal blue flames and began to pour oily plumes of smoke into the air. Smoke that’s beginning to turn in eerie circles and bring a low thrum into the air, like they’re stuck in some terrible b horror movie. They’re lucky that Kenji stopped bothering putting new batteries into the smoke detector ever since he burned a meal for the umpteenth time and had yanked the batteries out of the wailing alarm out of pure spite and frustration. All they need is the worried neighbors banging on the door just to witness a scene straight out of a dark fantasy.

Ennoshita wafts a hand over the crisping book pages and brings it closer to his face, squinting.

“If you botch up a summoning in the middle of my kitchen, Chikara, I’ll report you to the bureau for malpractice sooner than you can say—“

“Okay, okay,” Ennoshita says, pushing past Kenji and dropping the tattered but somehow still intact tome onto his counter. Kenji grimaces, trying to remember where he’d put the disinfectant wipes. “Where do you keep the salt?”

Kenji gets up before Ennoshita opens every single cabinet and cupboard in the kitchen, wandering into the small dining area to grab the salt shaker from the table. “For what?” He shakes the thing to make sure there’s enough inside. “Oh my god, did you bring a demon in here?”

“That’s kind of what I do, Kenji, if you haven’t noticed yet. And it’s not fully here, I don’t think. But it heard me, and it’s manifesting. It must have gotten trapped in between the—Oh.”

Kenji whirls around and stomps back into the kitchen, pausing to ogle the viscous lump of black that’s suddenly appeared in the middle of his tiles. There’s something that looks like a crooked horn protruding from the mass, and a gaping maw of a beaked mouth that keeps opening and closing around deep gurgles that Kenji never wants to hear again.

When he glances at Ennoshita he’s affronted to see a look of empathy on his face, like he’s really  _feeling_  for this deformed creature that’s slowly emerging from the floor and could quite probably kill them both with one lurch of that crooked horn.

“I swear to god,” Kenji says, skirting along the edges of the kitchen to shove the salt shaker into Ennoshita’s chest and, maybe, to leverage his way behind the other’s back to avoid getting directly involved in the brewing mess. “Get whatever it is the fuck out of here.”

There’s a belch of sickly sweet air that reminds him of the incense shop down the street, and the air temperature seems to spike several degrees. The smoke is swirling in a steady cyclone now, emitting a low howl. One of the cupboard doors fly open, whacks closed, then flies open once more. The dishes inside shift and clang, startling when a glass tumbles down and crashes to the floor. That’s when the dread really starts settling in, and Kenji stops joking around.

“Chikara—“

“Right,” Ennoshita shakes himself and takes a step forward. “Okay. Sorry. Just stay right there, this isn’t out of control yet.”

Kenji watches him unscrew the salt shaker and toss the cap aside, stepping, unhurried, around the perimeter, pouring salt at several points. He repeats the circuit one more time, this time throwing his arm in smooth arcs to scatter some sort of pattern onto the ground, glyphs he’s never bothered to learn outside of what the bookmasters shoved at him during dry lessons.

Ennoshita stops and starts muttering in a tongue he can’t understand.

Kenji isn’t not practiced in the arts like Ennoshita is. Kenji’s learning the sword instead of the words, and the process is much more entrenched and prolonged than the people who grew up with a strong connection to the other realms already and started down the path of self mastery years ago, like Ennoshita had. He’s not allowed to bring his sword outside of the academy either until he’s a full initiate next year, with any luck, so he’s kind of fucked if this  _does_  get out of hand.

It takes a few minutes, but the heavy static slowly begins to dissipate from the air. Kenji’s still tense, the edge of the counter digging into his skin where he’s backed against it, pieces of his sword training flashing uselessly through his mind.

Everything seems to be going well until the diminishing mass in the middle suddenly reforms with a great heave, and Ennoshita freezes mid-word and open mouthed. The pause seems to be all the demon needs to re-gather its strength and lunge out.

Kenji’s heart turns cold when he sees that crooked horn launch straight toward Ennoshita, almost too fast to track. There’s that eerie, bone deep gurgle rumbling from the demon’s maw that makes his skin crawl, Ennoshita lurching backwards, and a spray of thick black substance splattering across Ennoshita’s face and torso in garish looking slashes.

The marks drawn in salt bars the demon from going any further, it writhing and fumificating against an unseen barrier.

Ennoshita’s eyes are wide and Kenji’s pissed that he can’t tell whether it’s shock or injury, but there’s that stupid empathy shining in his eyes again. He’s such a  _sympathizer_  with those bastard things, even now, and that’s the last thing they need.

“Get it done already!” Kenji yells, enough to snap Ennoshita back to attention.

Ennoshita’s diligent then, saying the words until the darkness finally breaks and ebbs away.

Kenji rushes over and puts a hand over Ennoshita’s chest, heaving a sigh of relief when there’s no sign of damage. He swipes the pads of his thumbs across the black stuff that’s splattered across Ennoshita’s cheeks. It’s thick and tar-like, smearing with every rub, but Kenji can see faint red marks when he cleans enough of the stuff away.

“Jesus,” he breathes, holding Ennoshita’s face between his hands. “Are those burns?”

Ennoshita has the gall to laugh and smile, taking one of Kenji’s hands and squeezing it hard. It’s only then that he notices it’s trembling. “Easy stuff, right?”

“I don’t get why you’d want to do any of this. Why do you practice so much? We can’t even understand them and all they do is ruin.”

“Killing them can only do so much,” Ennoshita says, and he can’t read any contempt in the words for what Kenji’s training to become, just a heavy weariness that’s strange to hear from a sixteen year old. Ennoshita turns his head and kisses the center of Kenji’s palm. “They come to me too, all on their own. It makes me wonder why. I’m kind of stuck with it.”

Kenji doesn’t like the way Ennoshita’s staring at the spot where the demon had been moments before, so he yanks him up and they both survey the mess that’s become of the kitchen. The spent up salt is swept across the floor, turned gray like ash. There’s bits of glass in one corner and a strange, fine dusting of the same ash across some of the appliances as if Kenji hasn’t been home for months.

“Could you maybe,” Ennoshita starts, looking down at his own dirtied clothes, “Join me in the bathroom in a second?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kenji says, pushing against Ennoshita’s shoulder. “Go ahead and get started. I’ll sweep some of this crap up.”

When Ennoshita turns to leave Kenji goes to the sink and turns the tap. It gurgles and sputters for a few worrying seconds before pouring out clean, pure water. He scrubs his hands hard with a sigh, wondering what the hell they’ve got in store for them in the future.

He grabs a broom and dust pan from the cabinet and half heartedly sweeps a section of a kitchen before his worry overtakes him. Carelessly dropping the handle, he gingerly steps through the kitchen and turns into the open bathroom. Ennoshita’s standing before the mirror with his shirt off, one hand gripping the rim of the sink and the other on his own chest.

“Hey,” Ennoshita says.

“Hey,” Kenji replies, looking at the other’s reflection from over his shoulder. “How’s it looking?”

“Like I definitely got burned.” Ennoshita turns and removes his hand, revealing the full extent of the burn.

“Shit,” Kenji dances his fingers just above the marks, pulling away without touching. His skin is wet as if he’s already splashed water on it to try to reduce the swelling, but it still looks painful. “How’d it get you so good through your shirt? It looked like a lesser demon too. A weird one, but.”

“I mean, if you believe that they’re rising from the pits of hell it makes sense. And even if they’re not I imagine that it takes all sorts of energy to break between the realms like that. Maybe things get hot, even for lesser demons.”

“Right,” Kenji replies, not finding it in himself to care much for the specifics of it all. He guides Ennoshita to sit on the toilet and stoops down to grab the first aid kit from below the sink.

“Wow,” Ennoshita murmurs, watching as Kenji picks out a small tub of salve and wets a washcloth in the sink. “So you _have_ picked up some good habits from school.”

“Ha ha,” Kenji says, wringing out the cloth and kneeling before Ennoshita. The quip rings with truth though. He knows how to work his way around a kit and a couple serious external injuries with confidence now just in case something ever went awry, or he or a classmate wound up getting hurt from all that endless drilling.

He goes to work wiping away any remaining smudges of black, needing to rub somewhat vigorously to get it all away. When Ennoshita hisses at a swipe across his chin he gentles, then pulls away.

“That hurt?”

“A little.”

Kenji hums and turns back to the aid kit, picking up two other vials before finding the right one. Uncapping it, he dabs a bit of the oily substance onto the washcloth and returns to cleaning.

“What is that? It smells gross.” Ennoshita pulls a face. “And it stings.”

“It’s like the makeup remover equivalent for this demon ejaculate that’s all over you.”

“The way you phrase things is so nice.”

“Don’t ask me what’s in it,” Kenji laughs, working his way down to Ennoshita’s chest. Most of the black stuff had gotten on his shirt rather than his skin so it’s quick work to wipe away the remaining residue. “I just know how to use it. Something with certain materials that can counteract the poisons that touching a demon can give you, staving off the sickness, blah blah. Probably some aloe vera. You’d be better off asking Akaashi about this medical-alchemy-magic stuff.”

“I don’t think I want to let him know about this incident. That was self studying at its absolute worst.”

“Tell me about it. He’d probably give you that look that makes you feel like you disappointed your mom.” Kenji flops the washcloth over the sink and unscrews the salve, scooping a generous portion onto two fingers.

They lapse into silence as he stands up and prompts Ennoshita to tilt his face. He smears the salve in specks and swoops across the angry looking red areas, Ennoshita kissing his fingers when they pass over his lips. Kenji uses his free hand to tug Ennoshita’s hair for that, but he just cranes his neck back, smiles, and blinks his eyes closed.

 _Great,_ Kenji thinks, conjuring up images of the most twisted and unattractive creatures and items in all the realms. Trolls. Pug faces. That one garish Christmas sweater Aone made him when they were little.

Ennoshita’s insistent on being a squirmy patient though because after a minute of silence Kenji feels cool fingers brush against his wrist and up his elbow, thumbing into the sensitive inner crease of it.

“Soot,” Ennoshita explains, quietly, and Kenji has to wordlessly resume his task to avoid getting distracted. But when he looks back down Ennoshita’s staring at him and he still has that hand on his arm.

“You’re kidding,” Kenji says, heart thumping when Ennoshita leans forward to rest his forehead against his torso, re-positioning his hand so it can slide beneath Kenji’s shirt and rest at the small of his back, tugging him slightly forward. It takes an obscene amount of restraint to resist sliding his own hand through Ennoshita’s hair and down his back.

“I’m not getting in the shower with you,” Kenji grits out. “There’s no space.”

Ennoshita laughs a puff of air against him and leans back. “Getting in the shower would ruin everything you just did. I do think I want to lie down after this though. On my back, probably.”

“Unbelievable,” Kenji mutters at the wider smile Ennoshita sends him, shirking that hand off his back. Ennoshita drops it without protest, leaning back against the porcelain of the toilet.

Kenji kneels back down, liberally applying salve to the worst of the burns on Ennoshita’s chest. Reaching for a roll of dry gauze, he loosely wraps it around until the affected skin is covered up, snipping and pinning the end securely in place. He sighs when done, sitting back on his haunches.

The earlier amusement and suggestion is gone from Ennoshita’s face, replaced by a distracted vacancy.

Kenji frowns. “Are you really okay? Should I be sending you to a real hospital?”

“Yeah. No, this is more than enough.” Ennoshita rubs his forehead, grimacing when he gets some salve on his fingers, looking at a point over Kenji’s shoulder. “I just feel weird and all over the place. Sort of tired too. I keep hearing the way it roared when it came after me…”

“Is that normal?”

"The roaring?"

"The you feeling all over the place."

“I don’t know. That black stuff could have had some kind of taint in it. I’m not usually very, um.” Ennoshita wets his lips and blinks away some of that far-off gaze, looking him in the eyes. “Susceptible?”

“Because of your freaky affinity to the lower realm,” Kenji offers.

“If that’s what you want to call it. _You_ should really take a shower though. I know the mundane have a terrible resistance to this stuff, even if they train for years to wave a pointy stick around at giant demons.”

“Slurs and slander in my own bathroom,” Kenji says with a roll of the eyes, packing the kit away and back beneath the sink. He heeds the advice though, peeling his shirt off and turning on the shower so the water can heat up.

When he turns around Ennoshita is up and lingering, arms folded, at the bathroom’s threshold.

“Get out. I am so serious,” Kenji says, an unwelcome blush warming his cheeks.

“I’m just here to say thank you for the first aid. And sorry about your kitchen.”

“Uh huh,” Kenji retorts, waiting for Ennoshita to leave. He doesn’t, looking at him in that steady, sleepy way that’s always hard to ignore, but there’s something intense and off about it that makes him shiver.

Kenji thinks about taint and poison and lifelong affinity, a nervous flutter growing in the pit of his stomach. He thinks about how he still doesn’t know why Ennoshita left his own academy a year ago to attend a totally normal high school instead, or why he’s practicing summoning on an expired learner’s permit with borrowed books and online journal accounts and no signs that he’s planning on enrolling into a real academy any time soon for proper tutelage.

“Go take a nap, you gross horny teenager,” Kenji chides.

Ennoshita snorts and finally pushes away, disappearing around the corner.

He waits a second before moving to close the door. Pauses again, reaches back and locks it on pure instinct, feeling the goosebumps he often felt when the instructor would present caged minor demons for them to study in science class.

It couldn’t mean anything significant. It was probably just the taint working paranoia into his system.

Shedding the rest of his clothes and picking up the vial from earlier, he steps beneath the hot spray of the shower resolved to ask a professor about it the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka in which ennoshita is totally not 100% okay and kenji eventually finds out the hard way
> 
>  
> 
> ~~i hadn't planned on doing anything more with this since i typed it up for a drabble prompt today and have waaay too many wips. but who knows, i keep making shoddy au worldbuilds and getting invested....sobs...~~
> 
>  GET READY FOR A WILD RIDE MY FRIENDS
> 
> talk to me about ennofuta over at my tumb, 2ndyears, or my twitter @harklights. comments n kudos are love! have a nice day!


	2. parting is such

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i say this was a oneshot? nevermind
> 
> threw in some new characters. they'll always be added as they show up in each chapter. no major tag updates. enjoy!

After showering Kenji peeks into his bedroom to see Ennoshita lying on his back over the covers, chest rising and falling gently in sleep. He had discarded his tar-splattered clothes and thrown them haphazardly over Kenji’s already overflowing laundry bin, who mutters a quiet ‘Thanks’ while gathering them up, checking to see if the laundry underneath had gotten any of the stuff on them. It was risky to be in prolonged contact with anything that a demon could sputter up from the lower realm so Kenji is thorough as he rifles through everything, picking up a tank shirt that was directly beneath it all, a well-worn t-shirt with a smudge of black across its logo, and a sock that had brushed up against Ennoshita’s pants. He bundles the sullied clothing up in one arm, using his free hand to fling one half of his comforter over the mostly naked Ennoshita like a badly folded soft taco.

Ennoshita snores once and then goes quiet again.

 _Ugh,_ he thinks, staring at how nice he looks there, head tilted to the side and hair splayed across the pillow he sleeps on every night. If only he had his phone in hand.

He’s such a heavy sleeper that Kenji doesn’t bother tiptoeing his way around the room, snatching up a canvas bag to shove the clothes into. He shoulders the strap and picks up a bottle of laundry detergent and a pack of dryer sheets off his closet shelf, swiping up his wallet and keys before heading out the bedroom door, leaving it half ajar.

The sight of the kitchen causes him to wince when he sees it, already dreading the clean-up process.

Toeing on his shoes, he exits his dorm room and takes the stairs down to the basement that holds the communal laundry room. The whir and thump of a spin cycle greets him as he walks into the narrow space, six washers on the left and three dryers on the right, squinting into the drums until he finds an empty washer all the way at the end of the aisle. He tugs the door open, briefly considers separating his lights from his darks, but decides it would all be a huge waste of money for such a small load. Kenji tosses the clothes in together, drizzles liquid detergent into the pull-out tray, and slots a few coins into the machine before hitting a cold wash. Water rushes into the drum. He watches everything slosh around for a hypnotic moment before snapping out of the trance and turning to put his laundry things on top of one of the dryers, hoping that no one will mooch off his detergent.

He glances at his phone. Twenty-five minutes until the load finishes.

He makes a face. Twenty-five minutes of gratuitous _cleaning._

Jiggling his keys, he drags his feet the whole way back, stopping at the floor below his to scribble something immature on the whiteboard hanging on a mate’s door. It only takes a minute or two to finish the doodle, but then he hears a muffled voice speaking from behind the door and fumbles the dry erase marker back into its slot, walking fast – not running, running is incriminating – to the stairwell before anyone notices him.

When he unlocks his door and walks into his dorm he sees Aone standing at the edge of their kitchen with a baffled expression on his face, keys still held in one hand.

“I can explain that,” Kenji says, shoving the door closed with a foot and toeing off his shoes. Aone, still dressed in his practice uniform, turns around while undoing the high collar of his jacket. He shrugs it off, revealing a plain shirt tucked into sweatpants.

“You can try,” his roommate says, walking over to hand Kenji his jacket, who neatly hangs it up on a hook by the door before returning to the disaster in the kitchen alongside Aone, hands on his hips. There’s dead silence as they contemplate the mess together. The fine layer of ash is as eerie as ever, covering even the cabinets in a dust-like film. Aone’s glancing around like he doesn’t quite know where to start, and Kenji has to tamp down a shiver that creeps up his spine when he sees the leftover markings that Ennoshita had scrawled on the floor, the memory of how truly startling the ordeal was finally threatening to sink in.

After a moment of deliberation Aone pulls open a drawer and takes out a package of yellow gloves. Kenji shakes himself and lifts his gaze.

“Okay so,” he starts, slapping together the pair of gloves Aone hands him. “Chikara came over to hang out today, as you know, but he spent a lot of the time studying because he’s a huge nerd who’s married to his books.”

“Uh huh,” Aone helpfully facilitates, putting on some gloves and picking up the broom Kenji had haphazardly thrown to the floor in the disaster’s aftermath. The first sweep across the tiles kicks up a whirl of dusty gray ash. Aone adjusts the dustpan with one foot and sighs heavily as his socks become dirtied in a matter of seconds.

“He brought over this one book on advanced summoning rituals—”

“The one on the counter that’s glowing and smells like sulfur?”

One glance at the counter confirms the statement. The book is thick and leather bound with an elaborate cover, intricate borders and leafy bits and embossed script so elaborate he can’t tell what alphabet it’s supposed to be, but it’s all decorated with a varnished black rather than the typical gold or silver. Even the pages are edged in black. It emanates a blue light identical in color to the burst of blue flame that happened during the summoning ritual right before things went to shit. An unearthly phthalo, but softer than fire would be. Akin to the weak glow of a nightlight. It’s weird and off-putting, something more in the realm of magic or spellery or extremely arcane stuff that Kenji’s been advised to avoid messing around with unless he likes the possibility of opening a virtual Pandora’s Box.

“Uh, yeah, I don’t know why it’s doing that. It was normal earlier...” The book pulses faintly but noticeably and Kenji resolves not to touch the thing until Ennoshita wakes up. He can spot clean around it. “But Chikara was excited to try out that ritual that’s in there, apparently because the incantation is a hard one to figure out with all of the old runic script and lack of good free translations or something? And then he… well. He summoned a demon. The demon acted like a demon.”

Aone stoops down to pick up the dustpan, emptying it over the trash. The sound of glass tinkles and he remembers the broken cup from earlier. There’s a neatly swept section of kitchen floor, stark against the ash still covering everything else. “Why did you let him do that in here?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, opening a cabinet for the bleach wipes. Tugging on the yellow gloves, he gets to work wiping down the counters, for once grateful that their half kitchen hardly has any counter space. “It seems like a stupid thing to do now.”

“Dangerous,” Aone adds.

Kenji feels a pang of guilt at that, like he really should have known better and done something to moderate the whole summoning session. And he probably should have. It would have been easy to suggest going somewhere else, just outside in the corner of the courtyard hemmed in by trees. In the least he should have been prepared to do some damage control just in case things became messy. But the summoning had seemed like such a harmless thing to do at the time. He had been reassured by the knowledge that Ennoshita was absolutely no novice to the process of breaking between the realms and the promise that he wouldn’t be trying to court any high demons, just the mindless small ones that might upturn a chair or two but be nothing more than a general nuisance. All of that confidence disbarred any feelings of recklessness that he might have otherwise felt at observing a ritual

Something went amiss, obviously, and he should have considered the ever-present chance of things going amiss when it came to working with demons.

The one that rose from the floor had been… sinister. Powerful enough to kick up wind out of nowhere and fill the air with dread as quick as closing a curtain on a brightly lit room. It takes strength to manipulate things like that, he knows. The demons that could call forth darkness and smoke and really infect the world around them were nothing to joke about. It definitely hadn’t been a lesser demon at all like he first assumed.

It’s surreal thinking about it now too. The thing had hardly been fully formed. Not fully manifested, Ennoshita had said. Only its head and that crooked horn with a gaping, beaked mouth had appeared through the kitchen floor, and yet just that much must have been come up to his chest. Imagining the body that must have been lurking just beneath the surface threads a feeling of alarm through his mind.

“It won’t happen again,” he promises, catching Aone’s gaze. They look at each other for a significant moment before Aone nods, just like that, and Kenji is endlessly grateful for his friend’s quick forgiveness.

They lapse into a comfortable silence as they clean, focused on sweeping and scrubbing the thin layer of gray ash away. There are a few splatters of that paint-like substance speckled on the floor as if an abstract artist swept by and flung their brush Jackson Pollock-style at a canvas. Aone pays special attention to those areas, making sure there’s nothing splattered anywhere else in the kitchen. At one point Aone swaps out the broom for a wet mop and Futakuchi has to stuff himself up onto the counter, head banging against the low cabinets, when Aone knocks against his feet to get him off the floor. He’s quick and efficient when cleaning where he had just been standing and, tiles now pristine, they both take off their socks and trash them, Aone giving Kenji a look when he begins to complain about how they’re one of his favorite pairs.

It’s an unflinching gaze, even when Kenji cradles the socks in his palms like they need protection.

Kenji trashes them with great reluctance.

He redirects his want to mope about it by aggressively tackling the counter and sink until they’re both sparkling clean and he needs to sneeze from all of the bleach smell tickling at the back of his nose. Moving the little mound of used of wipes from the counter to dump them into the rapidly filling trash can is absurdly satisfying. He takes off the gloves and checks the time.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, rubbing his hands free of that gross fine powder that they line latex gloves with.

“Okay,” Aone replies, in the middle of taking down the jumble of alphabet magnets spelling out ‘END ME’ that Kenji had stuck on the fridge during his last English exam. He starts wiping down the fridge with a sponge and some bright citrus smelling cleaning product.

Kenji leaves him to it and returns to the door. Slipping his shoes back on, he heads down to the laundry room. He yanks open the washing machine’s door and reaches an arm in, groping around the drum to touch the clump of wet and slimy clothing. Wait… slimy?

He jerks his hand out. Peering in, he stares at the spot where his small load of clothing should be. Instead of Ennoshita’s outfit and his own shirt, tank, and sock that should be there he finds an indecipherable mass of mushy _something_ sitting at the bottom of the drum. He stares, an unsettling itch beginning at the tips of his fingers, convincing him that this is definitely, without a doubt a demon thing. Of course. There’s no way the colors could have mixed that badly even if he had accidentally used bleach instead of proper detergent. Which he hadn’t, a quick look at his belongings still sitting on top of the dryer behind him confirms that. This wasn’t splotches of discoloration ruining a section of a shirt, but a monochromatic grayness spread throughout every fibers as if someone had come along and done a thoroughly good dye job on each article of clothing and then thrown everything back into the wash.

Had it been all that black stuff? Was washing dirtied clothes the last thing you were supposed to do?

It makes sense – fuck, of course it does. A lot of normal products don’t work on things that originate in the lower realm unless they’re altered or charmed in some way. Mundane things were useless in that way. There were exceptions like… like the events they learn about in history class, rambling tales of warriors and priestesses and that jumble of sacred and profane that got modernized at the turn of the century, but some things simply don’t change. Weapons have to be enchanted or “blessed” to be able to truly harm demons at all. That first aid kit he used on Ennoshita earlier contains ingredients that Kenji certainly doesn’t know much about, crafted by people who, even at their least experimental, are literal alchemists and weird medicine makers. Even their school and practice uniforms are lightly charmed to repel contamination. Charming is a thriving industry for a reason.

That protective buffer has become so thoughtlessly entwined in his everyday life that Kenji completely failed to consider how the clothes he and Ennoshita had been wearing were totally unprotected.

Frowning, he rubs his fingers together, feeling the residue from the clothes coating them like cooking oil.

Is this what contamination looks like when it totally wins out, or had the water acted as some strange catalyst and ruined everything? Shit, he should have paid closer attention to this kind of stuff in class.

Grimacing and curious despite himself, he reaches into the washing machine again. The fabric has the consistency of wet newspaper. Mushy, wet, slimy, it crumbles between his fingers in sloppy clumps when he attempts to pinch it. He has to swallow down the litany of grossed of whines that want to snake up his throat as someone else walks into the room to empty a dryer, utterly unaware of Kenji’s internal struggle. His curiosity wilts. He kind of wants to fuck it all, turn around and march back to his room. Scrub his hands two or three times with very hot water and the strongest bar of soap he can find. But he doesn’t want to be that asshole who leaves his clothes in the wash for so long that someone else has to take it out, which is worse enough to deal with without the discovery that the clothes inside have disintegrated into some sort of gray blob.

So he’ll just have to suck it up. “Okay,” he mutters under breath, feeling unusually creeped out. Maybe the day’s excitement really is catching up to him.

He tries again, bravely shoving his fingers into the cold, slick mess in an attempt to scoop out a clump up only to have most of it slip free between his fingers. He recoils, distaste raising goosebumps up and down his arm. Demon thing. Definitely a demon thing. He’s getting tired of that prickling sensation marching up and down his skin today.

But he’s holding a small handful of the stuff now, examining it beneath the white glare of fluorescence. It looks entirely unremarkable. Drab and gray and glistening, so light that he can barely tell he’s holding anything. It reminds him of that ash from the kitchen, actually. The shade of gray is about the same, and there’s something wholly infertile about it. Like the sludge and waste material after chemical processing, or like the plumes ash that might spew from a volcano and rain down layers of fine powder that buries the land and ruin crops and delay hundreds of flights.

He unceremoniously dumps it back into the washing machine, shaking his fingers with a small disgusted noise.

He doesn’t have anything good to remove the stuff with. He’s frankly too disgusted and reluctant to use his hand again. Turning in a slow circle, ignoring the strange look he gets from the other student as she shoulders her laundry and exits, Kenji’s eyes finally lands on his bottle of detergent.

He unscrews the top and goes back to the washing machine, using the cap to scoop up the ruined clothes as well as possible, shuffling back and forth between the washer and the trash bin at least a dozen times before he calls it quits and good enough. He hovers over the trash briefly. Drops the cap in too, and then the whole bottle of detergent, and then the canvas bag that had been holding the clothes.

Maybe he’s growing a little paranoid about contamination but ‘better safe than sorry’ sounds very appealing right now. He was running low on detergent anyway. He can just pick up another bottle at the convenience store some time during the week or use Aone’s if he needs something cleaned before then.

Releasing a sigh, Kenji grabs his dryer sheets, the sole survival of the laundry fiasco, and trudges back up the stairs.

“That took a while,” Aone comments. He’s holding a very tiny brush now, the spiky wire ones that you use to clean test tubes, because he’s a merciless spot cleaner.

“I am so dumb,” Kenji laments.

Aone stops scrubbing the groove between the counter and the backsplash to give Kenji a considering look. He glances from Kenji’s face down to the dryer sheets he’s still holding in one hand and back up again, making the connections alarmingly fast. “Contaminated clothes?”

“You’re like my better half, you know that?”

“How much did you ruin?” Aone continues, as if Kenji were stalling. Which he’s not. Anyone would be reluctant to confessing that they screwed something up. It’s been a while since he messed up in the whole doing chores department like the first time he did his own laundry and returned to a lot of foamy bubbles and water spilling out of the washer. That was history. Like, a whole year ago.

“Maybe everything,” he slowly admits. “Not _everything_ everything! I didn’t do my whole bin.” He adds when Aone begins to look alarmed. “God, that would have been a third of my wardrobe. Just Chikara’s outfit and some of mine.”

Aone wordlessly takes in the response, then points his brush at Kenji. “Go wash your hands. Not here.”

“Why are you such a neat freak?” Kenji mutters, backing out.

“Why am I always cleaning up after your messes?” Aone retorts.

“Says the guy who locks onto people so hard that I can barely shove your arm down!” Kenji quips over a shoulder, hearing nothing but a taciturn silence as he turns into the bathroom. Silence means he wins.

He forgoes the normal antibacterial soap already next to the faucet and rummages through the kit beneath the sink again, plucking out a small bar of soap wrapped in a nondescript waxy package. He rips it open. A scent like the stockroom of an herbal medicine store hits him in the face. He wrinkles his nose but diligently washes his hands up to just below the elbows like they do in class, scrubbing only one time because his skin starts tingling in a way that feels both effective and like he might burn a layer of it off if he rubs any more of the soap over it. He leaves the bar on top of its packaging so it can dry and be repacked later.

Shaking his hands dry, he glances briefly at his bedroom door before deciding to leave Ennoshita alone to rest.

When Kenji walks back to the kitchen and puts his gloves back on Aone turns around and extends something toward him.

“No,” Kenji whines. Aone picks up his hand and drops a similar brush into own, bending his fingers over it like he’s entrusting Kenji with something precious. “Please.”

“You can take the left side.”

Aone turns around before Kenji can even try to inflict the Look on him, a combination of a pout and fluttering eyelashes that has only had sporadic success ever since they became teenagers.

Heaving a sigh, Kenji takes the left side with great reluctance, shoving the brush into the nearest crevice that he finds.

This time he breaks the silence in under a minute by selecting a playlist on his phone, volume turned up high. As it hits a streak of his favorite songs Kenji has to admit that this manual labor isn’t so bad, especially when he pauses to sing and dance at Aone while he continues cleaning like a disenchanted cat bothered by its owner. It makes Kenji smile and laugh, returning to his own task with more cheer.

“How was your day?” he belatedly asks. It’s an off day, a Sunday, but Aone had willingly stayed out longer than he usually liked to give them some extra privacy. Kenji and Ennoshita only got to meet up once a week, if that.

Kenji might become a little insufferable when they do see each other after a longer dry spell.

“Fine,” Aone says. “I went to the gym. Koganegawa-kun wanted to spar.”

“Ew,” Kenji says, ignoring Aone’s mumble of ‘mature’. “How did that go for you? The last time I tried sparring with him he whacked me on the side so hard it bruised. With a _practice_ sword. A wooden one! It looked like he was trying to swing a bat! His lack of coordination is seriously a hazard!”

Aone looks unaffected by Kenji’s growing indignation. “He said the instructors might switch him to a different focus soon.”

“Really? That’s early. We were stuck in that hellish hand-to-hand combat course for ages.”

“You sucked at it,” Aone notes.

“Um,” Kenji says, affronted. “I’m just much better when I have a tool in hand. Not all of us are lucky enough to be built like a fucking,” he twirls his brush at Aone, _“tank_ at age sixteen.”

That, for some reason, gets Aone to turn a shade pink. Kenji leans against the counter, folds his arms and stares because it’s kind of cute.

Aone does have the benefit of genetics on his side for sure. Both his parents are on the taller side. His big growth spurt came early, even before Kenji’s, and he has the ability to put on the kind of muscle mass that Kenji can already tell would be a bit of a long shot for himself. But besides that, it’s very rare for students to focus on weapons other than swords and ranged ones. Aone is into close, close combat. A lot of people would find that reckless considering the kinds of creatures they were training to fight against and the low resistance that most of the student population, being mundane, have against the taint. And it is a little dumb. Kenji worries about it sometimes, wondering how much more those inches between a fist and a sword would throw Aone in harm’s way once they all graduated and did real fieldwork in tertiary schooling or got hired out on a job. Aone is strong, but…

Aone glances at him, no doubt wondering why he stopped moving. Kenji blinks and returns to cleaning.

Where most students would abandon the grueling physical conditioning that they all had to go through as first years as soon as they earned the right to swing a practice sword, Aone likes to train and be active. He kept a lot of it up even after they began learning how to wield swords and shields, practicing techniques more than basic training. And his dedication shows. In his build and in the way he spars, able to read and anticipate an opponent’s movements better than his size may make you think. Kenji, despite his worries for the future, has to respect that.

“Koganegawa is clumsy but he has a lot of potential. You’ve seen him,” Aone cuts into his thoughts, picking up their conversation as if the lull had never happened. “He might end up with the sword and shield like you.”

Kenji considers that with pursed lips, imagining all of the pestering the first year might hurl his way in the near future.

“You should encourage him,” Aone says.

“I know, I know. I’ll try.”

“He looks up to all of the upperclassmen. Almost like how you admire Moni-”

 _“Right,”_ Kenji squeaks. “I get it. Take care of the golden boy.”

Aone laughs, just a breath that might be missed by many who aren’t familiar with the sound. But he kindly says nothing more about the matter.

Kenji pauses to switch to a different playlist and they both fall back into making the kitchen spotless. It’s mindless work, especially since Kenji is hardly as thorough as Aone is about this stuff. He finds himself zoning out and scrubbing at the same spot to the beat of the playing song until Aone directs him somewhere else, around a handle or behind the sink or, once, down at the grooves between the floor tiles, where Kenji has a bizarrely sharp realization that he was literally on his hands and knees cleaning with a glorified toothbrush. It continues like that for long minutes, meticulousness punctuated by Korean pop music blaring from his phone, until Aone steps back and says, “Okay.”

“Thank God,” Kenji sighs, ripping off his gloves and throwing them in the trash. “What time is it?”

Aone looks at Kenji’s phone. “A little after eight.”

Kenji shuts his music off. “Chikara should have been gone like half an hour ago.”

“It’s not too late. The RA stopped making rounds weeks ago. Does he have a certain train to catch?”

“I don’t know. I’ll go ask.”

Kenji’s bedroom has grown dim in the falling night, only the beam of light from the hallway helping him fumble his way to the small LED lamp on his desk. He clicks it on, the glow from the lamp bright but not harshly so, offering a small circle of light. He tilts it toward the bed.

Ennoshita has thrown off half the covers in his sleep, the comforter pooled down by his hips. He’s still mostly on his back, slightly favoring his right side with the arm that he’s shoved under the pillow.

Kenji softly kneels on the bed and then begins to ruthlessly bounce up and down on it.

“Ugh,” Ennoshita groans, voice raspy.

“You know you sound hungover every time you wake up, don’t you? Rise and shine!” Kenji bounces closer, jostling Ennoshita so much that he grunts and groans again.

“Stop. ’M tired.” Ennoshita tries to roll onto his stomach but hisses at the movement, flopping onto his back and bending an arm over his face to fend off the weak lamplight. “Let me sleep here tonight?”

“Nice try, but you know how the academy feels about sleepovers. ‘No overnight guests who aren’t other students or family, no joy, no social life, everything sucks but maybe you’ll die with glory fighting some otherwordly creature in a dirty alley while trying to save a little girl.’”

Ennoshita doesn’t say anything but there’s a small smile playing on his lips for the macabre humor.

“You’re lucky I was able to snag you a visitor’s pass for the whole day in the first place. Come on, Aone already got back an hour ago. He helped me clean up the mess in the kitchen too.”

That gets Ennoshita to peek out from under his arm, wincing with guilt. “How long did all of that take?”

“A while,” Kenji glosses with a nonchalant wave of the hand. “Aone likes to spot clean.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll apologize to him the second I see him.” He obscures his face again, quieter. “Was that more than an hour? I didn’t think I would fall asleep for so long.”

Kenji shrugs and sits down properly, crooking one leg onto the bed so he can slide closer to where Ennoshita’s reclined the middle of it. His leg touches Ennoshita’s side who finally, after a minute of compatible silence, removes his arm from over his face and lays a hand atop Kenji’s knee.

“Hey.” Ennoshita murmurs, eyes lidded, as slow to wake as usual. “How do you feel?”

“Taint free. Or maybe my weak mundane senses just can’t feel the poison slowly killing me from the inside out.”

“Don’t say that,” Ennoshita laughs, squeezing his knee. “You know I don’t mean it when I say stuff like that about normal people. They’re the strong ones. We would all be lost without good brave people like you, Kenji, who try even though they don’t have to. Even when it’s hard.”

“Don’t,” Kenji gripes, trying not to let the words affect him too much. The whole school body is doing the same thing as him after all, the training, the preparation to fight and protect. The words sink in close to his heart anyway. “Stop spouting lame crap. You’re still half-asleep.”

“And you’re embarrassed.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“Not,” Kenji insists.

“Are,” Ennoshita evenly retorts.

“How old are you again?”

Ennoshita drags his palm higher up Kenji’s thigh, easy and familiar. Kenji glances at that hand warily.

“I wish I could turn onto my side without being in pain,” Ennoshita says. “I wonder if anyone in this room could do something about that.”

Kenji rolls his eyes but leans forward regardless, bracing one hand on the mattress for balance, bracketing Ennoshita below him as he bends down to let their lips meet. The angle is clumsy, Kenji leaning over from the side when he would usually move to lay chest-to-chest against him without a second thought, but there are those burns to take into consideration. Ennoshita still smiles against his mouth like it’s good and Kenji still opens him up slowly, free hand helping to adjust the tilt of his chin, encouraged by Ennoshita’s responsive sigh gusting out over his skin when they slot together better than before.

He’s unhurried as he’s allowed to lick past that pair of pliant lips, tongue languidly exploring the slick heat of his mouth. They kiss slowly, thoroughly, Ennoshita letting himself be lead. Kenji wills himself to keep it like that, slow and undemanding – shallows their kiss to slide his mouth back and forth against Ennoshita’s, corner to cupid’s bow to corner, familiarizing himself with the contact. He focuses on cataloguing the feeling of lips against him, capturing first Ennoshita’s top lip and then his bottom lip between his own in two soft kisses. Ennoshita murmurs approval when Kenji cards his fingers into his hair and keeps them there, so easy to let him know what he likes, and Kenji rewards him by deepening their kiss again.

The bitter taste of salve working its way between their embrace ruins the experience a moment later, Kenji pulling away with his tongue poking out from between his teeth, nose wrinkled in distaste. “That’s definitely grosser than chapstick.”

Ennoshita blinks, licking his own salve smeared lips without a hint of revulsion. “It’s not that bad. Get back down here.”

Kenji smiles. “Maybe you should add a ‘please’ somewhere in there and I’ll consider it.”

But that doesn’t work, he should have known, because even though Ennoshita lulls into a brief silence that he thinks may be shy, he still looks Kenji straight in the eyes as he says, “Kiss me again, Kenji.” Cool fingers sliding up Kenji’s arm, keeping him close without pushing for more. “Please?”

Ennoshita starts propping himself up on an elbow after saying the entreaty, sparing Kenji the pity of faking a semblance of a fight. He presses on Ennoshita’s shoulder until he lays flat again. Ennoshita looks slightly surprised when Kenji moves to straddle the tops of his thighs, but the expression fades when Kenji leans over to kiss him again. The angle is definitely better this time, and Kenji’s less patient with keeping it chaste. He kisses harder. He adds teeth, nipping at his bottom lip until Ennoshita’s mouth opens over a sharp exhale. He roves his mouth along Ennoshita’s jawline to his neck, pressing open mouthed kisses to the juncture where his pulse is warm and strong, hears a breath of laughter whisper past Ennoshita’s lips, that half nervous half mindless habit of his when things escalate between them and he’s still a little too self aware about it. And that’s really no good, so Kenji slants his mouth and finds a section along the column of his neck to nip, lightly at first, testing the way Ennoshita’s breath hitches, before biting with the intent to mark.

Ennoshita doesn’t quite moan when Kenji sucks and laves his tongue over the spot, but it’s a very close call.

“Too hard?” Kenji asks, pulling back to admire his handiwork. Seeing the patch of aggravated skin, that little claim positioned slightly to high to easily hide it beneath a shirt collar, makes him feel way better than he’ll ever admit out loud.

“Not really,” Ennoshita responds, voice low and appealing.

“Someone’s masochism still exists.”

Ennoshita tugs until Kenji moves back down, and now neither of them are at all concerned with sweet and chaste.

The alarm bells ringing in the back of his mind tell him that they’re getting a little too noisy, but Ennoshita is honestly too good when he lets himself get into and Kenji’s beginning to wish that they did this earlier. Not to the point where he regrets how they spent the whole day doing dumb shit, but certainly feeling the missed opportunity of this moment that he now wants to stretch out as long as possible.

At least until he feels Ennoshita wedge his hand between them and place it, no nonsense, right between Kenji’s legs.

 _“Excuse you,”_ Kenji hisses, heat blaring onto his face.

“What?” Ennoshita breathes, kissing him again. “You’re turning me on.”

“And people think I’m the shameless one. You are so shameless.” His heart is beating close beneath his sternum, in tune with the _fuck fuck fuck_ bouncing around in his mind because of course those words would turn him on in return. It doesn’t help when Ennoshita shifts his hand very slightly in a slow drag across his lap in what could be unintentional but, knowing him, probably was not. But Aone is home and the bedroom door is still ajar and the last thing Kenji would ever want in this world is to have his best friend and roommate accidentally listen in on them making out in bed. He wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye for a straight month if that happened.

Just the thought of that nightmare helps cool him off enough to peel Ennoshita’s hand away, who sighs like he’s being particularly difficult about being felt up. He merely re-positions his hand back to Kenji’s leg.

“I could stay,” Ennoshita says, looking at him in that way that feels like molasses, worse now because his lips are red and bitten and there’s the beginnings of that mark clearly blooming on his neck. “Who would know?”

Kenji summons strength he didn’t know he has and says, practically, “Aone for one. And my RA.”

Ennoshita says nothing in return, drums his fingers against Kenji’s leg. Kenji wonders, for the umpteenth time, if Ennoshita is harboring some poorly concealed thing for thighs. He shoves himself up before they both have time to consider exploring that train of thought.

“Okay,” Ennoshita grits out. “Ow.”

“Oops.” Kenji eases up, glancing at the gauze wrapped around Ennoshita’s chest, still neat even after his nap. “How’s that feeling?”

“You just rammed your hand directly on top of my burn.”

“Besides that.”

“Ache-y,” Ennoshita says. “How does my face look?”

“Like utter shit.”

Ennoshita grins wide and plants a hand into Kenji’s face, making him lurch backwards to get out of the way. “Come on, let me go and apologize to your roommate and then I’ll be out of your hair for a whole week.”

Kenji clambers off Ennoshita’s legs, watching Ennoshita scoot off the bed, ginger with his movements. Ennoshita stretches slowly, yawns, and glances down like he might not recall when he shed everything but his boxers. He touches light fingers to his neck and hums like he enjoys what’s there

_Strength, Kenji._

“Want me to change the bandages before you go?” He offers, standing up. “Your clothes were ruined, by the way. I tried to throw them in the wash but it just turned everything weird so I tossed them, but you can take those clothes at the end of the bed there.”

“God, you didn’t have to do all of that.” Ennoshita picks up the shirt folded at the end of the bed and puts it on, a grimace of discomfort flickering across his face, motions slowing as he tugs the rest of the fabric down. He pulls on the sweatpants next, ignoring Kenji’s snort when he has to roll the elastic waist once to make them fit better. It still looks slightly too big and frumpy even for casual wear, but then they were both teenaged boys and a little sloppiness wouldn’t draw any undue attention on his way out of the dorms. “I’ll bring these back next week. And it’s fine about the bandages. I’ll just be going straight to bed as soon as I get home.”

“I can give you some of that salve anyway, for later. Since it looks like that might be bothering you for more than a few days.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

“I don’t know if you need any more ointment for that demon stuff."

“Mm,” Ennoshita hums. “No, I think I’m fine."

“You sure?”

“It kind of sounds like you’re stalling now.” Ennoshita says, looking away from where he had been studying Kenji’s messy desk. “Want me to stay?”

 _“I’m_ not the one who makes up these shitty house rules. And no, I want you gone. You broke one of our good cups and we only had like three of those. What are we supposed to do if we get a guest over now? Give them a bowl?”

Ennoshita scoffs and walks over, putting his hands on Kenji’s hips. “I love you,” he says, completely out of nowhere.

“Come on,” Kenji breathes, heat creeping like an itch over his face. He ignores it, swallows down the embarrassment and tremulousness sitting just beneath his skin and lets himself have this moment. “Love you too.”

They stand there like that, not quite entwined but definitely in the holding onto each other for no good reason. But it’s okay like this, standing in Kenji’s semi-cluttered bedroom. He tries not to think about how much the week might suck without having a chance to see Ennoshita face-to-face again, to lounge in bed with two laptops between them so they can trawl the internet for interesting videos and questionable streaming sites.

When Kenji opens his eyes again a languid minute later it’s to see that Ennoshita has flushed a pretty shade of pink.

“Finally,” he hears himself mutter. “A sign of humanity.”

“And the moment is over,” Ennoshita drawls, pulling away, knuckles rubbing over his cheeks as if the motion could erase the blush there.

Kenji is gravely tempted to tease him about it, but they’ve wasted enough time as it is. “You better go find Aone. And maybe fix your hair too.”

Ennoshita’s hand shoots up to the back of his head where the hair is all mussed up from bed and Kenji’s fingers, embarrassment still written all over his face. Kenji elbows him out of the bedroom, laughing, and Ennoshita retaliates by trying to trip him up in the middle of the short hallway. Kenji stumbles for balance and turns, shoving Ennoshita hard into the open bathroom. There’s a yelped curse and the sound of some plastic bottles tumbling to the floor before Kenji bolts away into the living area.

Aone is already looking his way from all the commotion and says, “You’re smiling.”

Kenji frowns. “No I’m not.”

Aone shakes his head and puts an aerosol can he was spraying away. The kitchen is even cleaner than it was before the whole summoning ordeal, not a speck of gray ash to be found. It’s practically flawless. Even the dishes have been piled neatly in the sink and on the drying rack in the time that it took him to fetch Ennoshita. He doesn’t know how Aone does it.

“Is Ennoshita sleeping over?” Aone asks.

“What? No. That’s not allowed.”

Aone gives him another look as if Kenji’s the worst rule breaker in the whole hall. He just might be on the list for a few minor infractions, but Kenji still puts an offended hand over his heart as Aone ties the trash bag and wiggles it out of the can.

“I’m going to the incinerator.”

“Hey, that’s okay. Let me take it down for you.”

“It’s fine, I can do it. You still have that report you should to get to.”

“I can get to that after I toss the trash. Come on,” Kenji insists, reaching. “I can be responsible. Let me take responsibility. We both feel bad enough about all of this already.”

Ennoshita comes out of the bathroom with freshly neatened hair, sees Kenji trying to lunge for the trash bag that Aone’s hidden behind his back, and turns back inside with a shake of the head.

“Did you see that? That was your fault for not letting me be nice and finish cleaning up.”

“Just take it and stop being so weird.” Aone relinquishes the trash bag. Kenji gives him his best smile on the way out the door.

The hallway is bright with fluorescence as he makes his way down and out the building. The incinerator is tucked off to the side of it. Kenji opens the door and peers into the blackened belly of the thing, feeling only a residual heat waft up from the space, thick but no sign of flames. Shrugging, he tosses the garbage bag into a large bin placed nearby for whenever it gets lit the next day. He takes a breath of fresh air and steals a moment of quiet. It’s brisk outside now. The area is cast into shadow as the sun finishes sinking below the horizon.

Someone taps him on the shoulder. Kenji turns to see Ennoshita with his knapsack slung over his shoulders, protruding and heavy with way too many belongings for a single day trip. There are the beginnings of dark circles around his eyes, easy to see even with the dusky lighting. The splotchy burns are still dotted over his face too.

“You look tired as hell.”

Ennoshita laughs and tucks his fingers into his short fringe in a habit that’s objectively kind of attractive, especially when he has to flatten it again afterwards. “Don’t you hate it when that happens right after taking a nap?”

“Did you beg for Aone’s forgiveness?” Kenji asks, dusting his palms off while moving away from the dull heat of the incinerator. They start making their way to the school gates at an easy pace.

“I didn’t have to beg, he’s too nice for that. He said it was fine but I still feel bad about everything.”

“If he said it then he meant it. No harm, no foul.”

“But still,” Ennoshita sighs. “I’m beginning to think we were pretty lucky today.”

He’s obviously going to harbor some guilt about the matter no matter what he or Aone say, so Kenji switches gears. “That book of yours was glowing earlier."

“Ah,” Ennoshita says. “Yeah?”

There’s no surprise in the response. Kenji falls a step behind and peers at Ennoshita’s backpack. There are small patches of blue light glowing from the zigzags between the zipper which is yeah, definitely freaky and reminiscent of candlelight flickering from the carved grin of a jack-o-lantern. “So that’s normal then?”

“Oh. Not really. You and Aone didn’t touch it, did you?”

“No way. I’ve had enough of summoning for one day.”

“For once I think I agree with you on that. Do you think this will freak anyone out on the train?”

“That would be hilarious. But no, it just looks like you stuffed a thousand glow sticks in there. Say that you’re coming back from a rave.”

“A good rave would just be starting.”

“A rave hosted by conscientious teenagers, whatever, I know you like making up lies when you can get away with it.”

Ennoshita shakes his head. “Storytellers everywhere would spite you for that one.”

They pass an emergency callbox, one of several dotted around the school and neighborhood just in case someone needed to call in for assistance. The blue light sitting at the top of the pole is too bright, Kenji squinting his eyes away from it.

“You’re gonna be okay for the train?” He asks.

“They’re still running. It’s later than usual but I already texted mom and dad about it.”

At last they come up upon at the gates, the area empty of both foot and car traffic. One of the lights above stutters every once in awhile, the shadow of a moth hurling itself at the it flickering hazy shapes across the sidewalk. The area is residential enough that there are only a few other lights dotting the pavement. The rest is inky darkness, the sky fading to bruised purples and blacks half obscured by puffy clouds.

Kenji tilts his head and puts on a smile. “Want me to walk you all the way to the station?”

Ennoshita tucks a thumb beneath a shoulder strap, slowing to a stop. “Fend off all the scary things that go bump in the night?”

“I would need to go grab my sword first.”

Ennoshita laughs, quiet, and takes a step nearer.

And if someone sees them when Ennoshita presses him against the wall and kisses him sweetly, brazenly, one last time before turning away to leave then Kenji could not find a single shred of care in his body.

“See you later,” Kenji says, still slouched against the wall.

He watches Ennoshita’s retreating back before peeling away from the gates, humming his good mood.

 

**

He isn’t surprised when he doesn’t hear from Ennoshita for the rest of Sunday night. He probably got home late and went straight to bed like he said he would. The silence all through Monday is a little stranger, but he shrugs it off as Ennoshita catching up on the real homework he probably should have been doing on Sunday instead of the both of them fooling around all day.

Kenji’s busy schedule keeps him occupied with the daily crunch. A rush of early morning drills then academic classes then more drills and practice that almost always drags on longer than what it’s scheduled as.

Kenji’s body is thrumming with that familiar well worked-out weariness by the time he comes home and throws himself into bed, trying not to contemplate the homework that still needs to be done. His cell phone says that it’s just past seven at night. But he can only wallow for so long before his mind inevitably tells him that he’s giving himself more misery by putting everything off.

Dinner first, and then suffering.

“Aone! Food!” He raps his knuckles across his roommate’s closed door. “Aoooone! Food! Do you want to eat in or order something?”

He stops and listens, hearing no response. Odd. The light is definitely on in there.

Shrugging, Kenji opens the door with a flourish. Aone, who’s sitting on his bed, pauses mid wave and looks up. There are muffler headphones clamped over his ears and an open laptop sitting on the bed before him.

“What, are you in a call with someone? Is it that little guy from before?” Aone squints at him. Kenji ignores the look and dashes over to squeeze in bed beside him, tilting until he can see the screen. The redhead on the screen jolts backwards when Kenji’s face suddenly fills the frame. There’s a mini redhead next to the little guy, except she’s a little girl and she’s still waving rather happily.

“They’ve multiplied!” Kenji exclaims.

Aone nearly shoves him straight off the bed. Kenji sighs dramatically and retreats, closing the door as quietly as possible.

He’s contemplating just eating a very large bowl of cereal for dinner when his cell phone buzzes.

 

 

> From: Aone
> 
> Check the fridge. Mom sent a care package
> 
> To: Aone
> 
> ok thanks say hi to your gf for me
> 
> From: Aone
> 
> Stop

He puts his phone on the counter and checks the fridge, spotting some tupperware that hadn’t been in there that morning. He pulls one of them out and opens it, greeted with the sight and smell of delicious home cooked food. Silently thanking the higher powers for the blessing of Aone’s mom, Kenji reheats a generous portion of it up and takes the plate back to his room so he can start the unflattering process of shoveling food into his mouth while doing homework.

So he ignores the desk he rarely ever uses for actual school work and scoots into bed, digs out his laptop, and opens up the report due the next day, staring at the text splayed across the screen with reluctance. He thinks about wording while taking a bite of food. Jabs a key, then another, bullies his way through a few sentences until he forces himself into something close to a groove and gets a decent pace going. It’s a post-lab report that he fortunately has all the notes and conclusions for already, getting rid of the need to contact the lab partner he’d been paired up with for the class. It doesn’t take too long since there’s not much new material that needs to be added other than the conclusion and a time consuming graphic. He leaves the document as a rough draft and takes out a different subject to get him agonizing about something different, scribbling answers onto a handout he nearly forgot about after shoving it into his bag after the class ended.

He continues grinding like this, prioritizing the next day’s work before the other assignments due later in the week. Two hours into working his messenger pings with a new message. Kenji drops his pen faster than anything, relieved to have a legitimate distraction that he hadn’t started himself.

It’s even better when he finds that it’s Ennoshita finally contacting him. Of course. Most everyone else has abandoned using this old fashioned kind of chat client when things like LINE and Skype exist, but Ennoshita is weirdly fond of it and Kenji caves easily, even if the little window that pops up reminds him of his awkward middle school days.

 

 **Chikara:** i usually sleep on my stomach but now i can’t

 **Chikara:** i might die

 **Kenji:** dramatic

 **Chikara:** i’ve been thinking of starting a new film project

 **Chikara:** since i can’t sleep and everything

 **Kenji:** just how long have you been awake?

 **Chikara:** only about

 **Chikara:** 30 hours?

 **Kenji:** ONLY???

 **Chikara:** come on

 **Kenji:** ONLY???

 **Chikara:** kenji

 **Kenji:** do you know anything about what it means to be a good patient? should i link you to the definition of “bed rest”?

 **Chikara:** i am technically in bed

 **Kenji:** yeah just missing the taking care of yourself part

 **Chikara:** i liked it more when you took care of me

 **Kenji:** alright

 **Kenji:** i dare you to take a picture of your face right now and send it to me

 **Chikara:** no

 **Kenji:** i’m already laughing lol

 **Kenji:** you turn bright red sometimes lmao pls send a pic

 **Chikara:** i’m blocking you

 **Kenji:** what

 **Chikara:** i’m going to draft out my ideas i need to focus

 **Kenji:** cold

 **Kenji:** is this what being tsundere is like

 **Chikara:** Bye

 **Kenji:** show it to me when you’ve got something

 **Kenji:** Hello?

 **Kenji:** helloooooooooo

 **Kenji:** this is tsundere af chikara just letting you know

 **Kenji:** also silence means i win

 

Ennoshita’s status flickers to offline and Kenji grins, tossing his phone back onto the bed to return to work.

**

He wakes up Tuesday morning feeling a lot of regret for several things, like staying up so late to finish his assignments, stress eating too many of Aone’s mom’s cookies during the process, and for being in school in general. His phone says it’s six fifteen in the morning, too late to stuff his face back into the pillow and snooze for a couple more minutes.

Kenji kicks off his comforter, languishes there for a long moment, worms to the edge of the bed, contemplates the repercussions of dropping out of school altogether.

His bedroom door abruptly flies open, nearly giving him a heart attack. It’s only Aone standing there.

“You need to stop doing that,” Kenji whines.

“You sleep through your alarm sometimes. Come on, we can’t be late for assembly.”

Kenji groans his low opinion on the weekly assembly while Aone turns around, leaving the door wide open. Something about lining up for an hour once a week is so droll and childish and utterly pointless. They hardly have anything new to say, just cycling through the class reps until they get to the headmaster, who says something dry and galvanizing and throws in a few headlines if something big is happening in the realms, then sends everyone to class. Kenji thinks they could use the PA system and make regular morning announcements like normal schools do but no, apparently being stuffed in a uniform, lined up in rows at attention and barked at is the one military element that the school board absolutely loves, believing that it promotes camaraderie and school spirit.

He has admittedly bonded with people by sheer force of boredom before, but that’s all.

Getting out of bed, Kenji goes to his closet and takes out his uniform, scrutinizing it for wrinkles. He trudges out his room and into Aone’s, lays his jacket on his bed, and uses his iron to smooth out the imperfections.

“There’s an ironing board,” Aone comments from before the mirror he’s checking himself in front of. He’s dressed and probably already ate some breakfast like a well-adjusted morning person.

Kenji grabs the ironing board and wrestles with it until it unfolds, then goes back to ironing. It always takes longer than he thinks it will. By the time he’s finished neatening the seams of his pants he has to dash to the bathroom to wash his face, brush his teeth, fix up his hair, and throw everything on.

“Okay, okay, okay, I’m here.” Kenji chants, seeing that Aone is already waiting by the door. He aligns his shoes and begins toeing them on when he freezes and whispers, “I forgot my keys.”

Aone groans as Kenji dashes back into his room, shuffling through several places before he finds his id and keys on top of his dresser. Where he usually puts them. He stuffs them into a pocket and runs back out. They both leave, having to fast walk out the door and through campus grounds. The courtyard is already bustling with students lined up in neat rows. It takes a minute of scanning before he finally finds his group in the sea of identical uniforms and maneuvers his way toward them.

“Captain’s on deck,” Onagawa says when he finally worms his way into the correct spot that had been saved for him. “Finally.”

Aone stands next to Kenji. They both folds their arms behind their backs, thumbs hooked together, and stand at attention. Kenji narrows his eyes at a classmate’s head in front of him.

“It is way too early, Pantalons,” he heatedly whispers.

“Actually, we’ve been here for fifteen minutes and it’s already past--”

“This platoon is so great.” Obara cuts in, voice dry. “We’re going to go so far. I love you guys.”

Someone does a poor job of stifling a laugh. Kenji thinks it may be Sakunami because the kid is noticeably less nice within an hour of waking up.

Someone else touches his back and says “There’s lint, senpai.” It’s Koganegawa.

He hates this. He hates this so much.

Fortunately the sound of a mic being tapped grabs everyone’s attention. The morning assembly begins.

It’s even worse than he remembers it being. Everyone seems to be in a tacit agreement to make their voices as droning and sleep-inducing as possible. Kenji immediately stops paying attention to the speechifying in favor of scanning the people in front of him, staring at one kid’s flyaway dancing in the breeze for a full five minutes, wondering if they’ve ever heard of a thing called a brush. He studies the facade of school building in the background, then looks at one of the trees like it may hold the secrets to the universe. The topics shift from general greetings to a long string of school news, a segue into any notable achievements made during the past week, and prospects for the current one. There’s wider talk about the realms, about a visiting professor who’s giving a speech that they can start rsvping to, about dedication and vigilance even though they’re still minors and students. There’s the reiteration of the Iron Wall, again, and about leading by example, but Kenji still feels a flicker of pride no matter how overplayed the nickname is.

Kenji tunes in briefly when he hears Moniwa’s voice but he’s too far back to see him or how well his new uniform suits him. He sighs. Obara makes a noise suspiciously similar to the smacked lips of a kiss.

Kenji spends the rest of the assembly contemplating murder.

The headmaster is the last to step down after saying something that Kenji was resolutely not listening to. They’re dismissed at last.

“That felt longer than usual,” Nametsu says, stretching her arms in front of her. The rest of the students are parting quickly, many still with their groups. Some of the first years from their platoon excuse themselves, others break away, and they’re left with the usual crew.

“I’m going to kill you first,” Kenji points at Onagawa, “And then you.” He arcs his finger to Obara.

“That’s a double homicide,” Sakunami says.

“Did you skip breakfast or something?” Obara asks.

“Let’s go grab breakfast together!” Koganegawa yelps, way too close to his ear. Kenji turns and gives Koganegawa a bewildered look, who fails to notice it over the force of his own enthusiasm. “The dining hall is open now!”

“We don’t have a meal plan,” Kenji says. “There’s food at home, right?”

Aone nods, then pointedly tilts his chin in Koganegawa’s direction. Kenji smiles vapidly like he doesn’t understand. They stare at each other for a moment before Kenji resigns himself to defeat.

He turns toward the first year. “So, Koganegawa… If you ever need any...” He takes a fortifying breath. Koganegawa’s attention is strangely rapt and obedient. He literally looks starry eyed. _“Help_ with anything, or if you’re having trouble with something, then I’m here. You have my number right?”

There’s an eerie beat of silence where he can feel the others looking at him too.

“Yes!!” Koganegawa chimes, any disappointment from his failed breakfast plan vanishing. He lights up like a freaking Christmas tree and Kenji feels like he’s just donated all of his childhood toys to charity after someone pointed out that he hardly plays with them anymore anyway. “Thank you, Futakuchi-senpai!”

“Okay,” Kenji says. Sakunami is smiling pleasantly and no one looks like they want to crack a joke. It’s still weird to be on the receiving end of that kind of attention, the rest of them obviously waiting on him to say something else. Kenji straightens his shoulders.  “Break time. Eat if you haven’t already and get to class on time. There’s no practice today but be ready for it tomorrow morning. The group chat’s open if anyone wants to arrange something in their own time. Stop using it for memes, you’re not funny.”

There’s a chorus of agreeable ‘yes!’s and they break, going their separate ways. Kenji’s thrumming with that mild satisfaction he feels whenever he has to assume the leadership role and doesn’t botch it up, and this time he thinks it feels nice.

**

Classes resume as usual after a generous passing period. After heading back to the dorm for a quick breakfast and a change into his relaxed uniform he has to make a visit to the printers to print out his report. There’s a queue of like minded students, of course, and he eyes the clock nervously as the line shuffles along. He reaches the front, grabs his paper, and slides it into a notebook on the way to class.

The day passes uneventfully. There are lessons and a pop quiz that makes the entire room break out into protestations. More lessons, a lab, he turns in his report, grabs some lunch with Aone, and then goes back to class for a few more hours.

By the end of it Kenji wants a nap so bad that he nearly dozes off after laying his head down on his desk, but he has an essay in Japanese history due soon that he hasn’t started researching so he pinches himself, gets up, and goes to the library to look for credible sources. He finds two good books after searching the stacks and decides to lazily peruse their bibliographies for more reading material instead of doing the actual grunt work. He doesn’t need that much, the professor is letting them cite their textbook as a major source.

Kenji finds a spot at a table, flips opens all of the books up and arranges them around him until he feels satisfactorily swamped and busy looking, then he tabs opens a new browser window and gets lost in social media for half an hour.

Eventually the paranoia that someone’s reading his shitposting from over his shoulder gets to him, like he assumed it would if he went to study in the library, and he turns on his website blocker to bolster his productivity.

He does homework. He types out a few essay topic ideas and leaves them for later, switching to jotting down notes and finding good quotes he can shove somewhere in the essay. Remembers his headphone, plugs them in, and continues working with more energy for all of ten minutes before remembering that most homework isn’t very fun. He enjoys math and science enough, but their curriculum involves a good amount of the dubious realm stuff that’s more speculation and case-by-case examples than actual science. Kenji understands the need to learn it but it still drags on his enthusiasm when he would prefer doing experiments and labs, no matter how protracted those could become.

He churns through the homework, slowly but surely, until it’s late enough that he decides to call it quits. He tends to overcompensate for his weekend laziness by playing catch up and getting ahead of the curve early in the week. It’s kind of grueling, but whatever. It’s definitely better than agonizing over a forgotten worksheet on a Friday morning ten minutes before class.

Turning off the web blocker, he shuffles through a few social media sites to check out what he’s missed and post a few bitchy i-hate-school updates of his own. Kenji checks the group chat in LINE, lips curling in distaste when he sees a stretch of stickers and emoji with maybe one or two actual words over the past hour. It is absolute trash in their chat all the time no matter how much he tries to dutifully steer it toward meaningful conversations. Everything gets derailed and there’s not just one perpetrator. They’re all totally ridiculous.

Kenji sends the most disgruntled sticker he can find and sends it. There’s a flurry of responding pings that he refuses to subject himself to. Closing the laptop, he stuffs his belongings into his backpack and goes to check out the two library books so he can feel their mocking weight in his bag and remember to get the damn essay finished eventually.

The short stroll back to the dorms is a welcome respite. He takes his time with it, fiddling with his phone to check his conversation with Ennoshita. There’s no new messages. He frowns, a curl of dissatisfaction worming its way through his stomach.

 

 **Kenji:** you’re way too dedicated to this silent treatment thing. i know you have like half a screenplay and a dozen costume ideas by now

 

The little icon says he’s offline so Kenji doesn’t bother leaving another message, pocketing the phone with a sigh.

Aone’s not home yet when he gets back, giving him the luxury of taking a long and leisurely shower until the mirror fogs up. He wipes the condensation off with the side of his fist and peers at his reflection. Nothing leaps out at him as amiss. He feels fine, healthy, and solidly concludes that they got away safe from the whole summoning fiasco.

Changing into pajamas, Kenji barges into Aone’s room and reclines on his bed, wasting time online until his roommate comes in.

“Movie time!” Kenji greets.

“I still have some homework to do,” Aone announces.

“Guess who finished theirs already?”

Aone undresses and grabs a change of clothes, disappearing out the door. A minute later Kenji hears the shower come on.

He wastes more time by picking a lighthearted romcom from a somewhat sketchy streaming site, leaving it to buffer while he heats up a late dinner. He pops a plate in the microwave for Aone too, the last of the food from the care package bar the cookies that Kenji’s been unfairly rationed to only two a day. He checks his phone again (still nothing from Ennoshita, about a million more pointless notifications from the group chat), lets himself grumble for a second, and carries the food back to Aone’s room, who returns not long after and gives the plates sitting on the bed a dubious look.

“When’s the last time I spilled something on your sheets? Come on, I’m going to hit play!”

Aone sighs and takes a seat as intro music starts blaring from the speakers. They eat, Aone takes their empty plates back to the kitchen and brings back two glasses of water, and then he starts the homework he said he had to do. Kenji isn’t bothered by having to watch the movie on his own, simply recruiting Aone’s shoulder as a pillow and complaining about the more ridiculous scenes that unravel on screen.

**

Wednesday goes by much like Tuesday, minus the excruciating early assembly. The team has practice scheduled in the morning. They make it to the gym just as the previous group is leaving. A lot of their practices are individual exercises, stuff that they or Oiwake-san thinks they should be working to improve. Most of the first years are still building upon the basics: a lot of conditioning, cardio, getting together the foundations of a sound physique. The sound of commotion fills the air, feet thumping on mats and noises of exertion.

Leader-wise Kenji doesn’t have to do much besides float around and check up on everyone and generally be there to help keep practice going smoothly so no one starts acting too rambunctious, a responsibility that’s a bigger pain in the ass than he thought it would be.

Aone, Obara, and Onagawa are together in one section of the gym. Fukiage’s with some of the other first years. He hears Koganegawa somewhere but doesn’t need to check to know he’s working hard.

Sakunami and Namestu spar well together, even when she laughs at him when he stays down after being thrown onto his back again. Namestu’s already talking about learning sabre.

Later on when Koganegawa breaks away from his training and asks him to help check his grip, Kenji impressively manages to swallow down a sigh as he leads them to the weapons rack to pick out their swords.

**

It’s Thursday afternoon when he gets a phone call, ringing loudly from the depths of his sports bag. He’s in the middle of a free period, one he chose to spend down at the gym going through the steps of a sword drill they’ll be tested on Friday. It’s not too difficult, but then Kenji has always found the repetitive steps and precise motions of a drill fun to learn. Other students had the same idea. Self study alone and with friends or classmates is prolific in their school. The area is noisy with the sounds of shuffling feet and the whiz of training swords cutting through the air, chatter from others simply huddled together while taking breaks.

The name lit up on his phone says Caller Unknown. He hits the green pick up button before it rings through to voicemail.

“Hello?” He says, fanning the neck of his shirt.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end answers. It’s not a familiar one. “Futakuchi?”

“That’s me.” He peers at his phone. The location says it’s in Miyagi. Must be relatively local. “Who are you?”

“I’m one of Chikara’s friends. Kinoshita Hisashi. We might have met like one time before when you came over to visit.”

Kenji hums his recognition even though he can’t quite recall the other’s face. Ennoshita’s circle of friends is surprisingly large.

“I’m just wondering if you’ve heard anything about how he’s doing?”

Weird question. Did he have to call for that? “I don’t know. He was fine when I last saw him. Tired, that’s it.”

“Well, it sounds like he’s gotten worse.” A rustle from the other end of the line, a sound of a door closing, background noises muffled away. “I haven’t been able to see him since Tuesday night. They’ve put some kind of massive quarantine on him.”

“Who did?”

“The bureau.”

That’s news, and Kenji squints at the far wall with scrutiny. “Seriously? They shut him up in his own home?”

“No,” Kinoshita says, sounding confused. “At the hospital?”

“…What?”

“I thought you knew? Chikara admitted himself into urgent care on Monday and ended up being put into an entirely different ward.”

_Monday?_

“For the burns?” Kenji asks, incredulous, hoping he hadn’t fucked something up with his first aid and somehow made everything worse. Was it even possible to make a burn that much worse? It had been a straightforward treatment but maybe the demon thing complicated things. Made it a bureau matter. Maybe he should have dragged Ennoshita to the medic on campus after patching him up, gotten a professional’s opinion on the matter to see if he needed to do anything else. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Sure, they would have had to confess as to how Ennoshita had gotten hurt in the first place. Crazy things happened on campus all the time. At worst they would have been reprimanded for doing a stupid thing in the dorms without permission and the school board would frown and shake their heads and given Kenji some pointless punishment dug up from the depths of the rulebook since he’s the one who’s actually matriculated in the academy. But a slap on the wrist and a red dash in his records isn’t a big deal compared to words like _quarantine_ and _hospital_ and _the bureau._

In his rumination he hardly notices the silence unspooling on the other end of the line until Kinoshita interrupts it.

“Uh… no.” Kinoshita sounds hesitant now, like he’s breaking bad news about a beloved pet to a child with very little concept of death. Kenji suddenly remembers what the boy looks like – short tousled hair the color of wheat and sharp cat-like eyes.

“He’s in for the sickness."

Kenji’s mouth falls open. Closes a second later, having no words to release.

Unease squeezes vice-like around his chest. There was no way… Ennoshita couldn’t have come down with the sickness so quickly, not with the good immune system he boasts against the taint. Kenji’s under the impression that he’s practically totally immune from the worst of the taint. At least he was. But if Kinoshita is telling the truth, and there’s no reason why he wouldn’t be is there?, it means that Ennoshita was admitted into urgent care on Monday, just one day after he parted from Kenji’s dorm. One day, maybe even less than twenty four hours from the moment they last saw each other.

Had there been symptoms? He thinks back to Ennoshita’s odd behavior in the bathroom while getting patched up, something that had been easy to brush off at the time but seems undeniably suspect now. His exhaustion. The brief flurry of messages that they shared late that same Monday night, Ennoshita hinting at his budding film ideas as if he was simply bored and inspired and had nothing better to do with his free time.

Had he already been admitted into the hospital then, messaging from a sickbed? Was that why he hadn’t texted or why he’d been unable to sleep for so long, for thirty straight hours? Was that the sickness too?

And then the full radio silence afterwards! Not a peep since then, and sure Ennoshita is occasionally sporadic with his responses but rarely for several days at a time unless he has something going on in life, a hectic week or a trip or something, and even then Kenji is usually notified about it in some way. All of the lowkey curiosity at Ennoshita’s unusual elusiveness that had been pushed back by school and practice barrels to the forefront of his mind, morphing into a thick blanket of worry.

Ennoshita probably wanted to recover all on his own. Would have smiled it all away if confronted about it after he got released, said that it was nothing to worry about, the overprotective _fucker._

“No,” Kenji grits his teeth. “He didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“Okay then,” Kinoshita says, sounding like he doesn’t want to get into any details. An exasperated noise blows over the line. “So you’re just as lost as me and Kazu. This doesn’t help much…”

“I’m coming over there this weekend,” Kenji impulsively blurts out, resolved in the same instant. He has to visit.

“They won’t let you through, trust me. We’ve tried. They’re being extra careful with everything since it’s a mixed hospital and the risk of contamination is high. I think… you’re good if you’re family or spouse but ‘classmate’ doesn’t cut it.”

Great. Kenji bunches his sword hand into a fist a few times before coming upon an idea, stopping the motion midway. “What if I was there when he summoned that demon?”

There’s a pause, and then, “How there were you?”

“In the same room. I saw the whole thing.”

“That might get your foot in the door.” Kinoshita muses. “It _is_ the bureau. They take any new information that they can get if it has to do with the realms, especially in the medical field.”

“That’s good enough for me.” He hopes that being an eye witness – he balks from how serious that sounds – would truly help him. “Do you have the hospital’s address?”

“It’s Sakanoshita…” Kenji kneels down and fumbles through his gym bag for the little notebook and pen he keeps there, jotting down the hospital’s name and address in a messy scrawl across his knees.

“I can meet you at the station if you want,” Kinoshita suggests when finished. “It’s about a twenty minute walk from there to the hospital.

“Yeah,” Kenji agrees, looking at the address, trying to recall what little he’s seen of Ennoshita’s neighborhood. A guide would be helpful. “Yeah. How was he when you last saw him?"

The silence on the other end is too reluctant, and this time his worry turns into a cold lump in the middle of his chest.

“Not very good,” Kinoshita confesses. “But not the worst.”

“Okay,” Kenji says, flipping his notebook closed. “Thanks for calling. I’ll text you later about when I’m coming in later.”

“No problem. I’ll see you in a few days.”

As soon as they say their goodbyes and hang up Kenji opens up a browser on his phone and double checks train routes and estimated travel times, barely paying attention to his surrounding as he exits the gym.

 ****  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter:
> 
> “What did you do to him?” Kenji asks, frozen by the door. A shiver tamps up and down his spine, not from the chilly air. It’s the kind he gets in science class when the instructor presents minor demons for them to study, and he looks at the floor, at the windows, confused, panic and worry a muzzy mix in his mind.


End file.
